A Few Words on Affiliate Links

If you read my first post you know I started this blog because some people accused me of promoting products while all I did was to provide a link to a discounted software package. The link was indeed a so called affiliate link but the discount was for real.

So what are affiliate links after all? After some research I think I can accurately answer this question. First of all, what's an affiliate? An affiliate is a person that promotes a third party product and receives a share of the revenue generated by each sale.

Let's assume I'm the affiliate and I promote a software product. When I signup to become an affiliate, I'm given a custom link to send visitors to the "Buy Now" page for that particular product. I pass this custom link to you, you buy the product and then I get a share from the sale. Sounds like a nice way to make some money. An interesting fact: very often the affiliate gets more than the vendor!

When talking about software, affiliate commissions may reach 75% of the sale. I have to say this was a surprising fact for me. The vendor pays the programmers, develops the product, provides customer support and has a lot of expenses in the end. It seems unfair he gets only 25% of the sale while the affiliate gets the lion's share solely for promoting the product. But I guess $10 from a $39 sale is better than nothing after all.

Ok, back to the affiliate links. Affiliate links contain an affiliate ID so the sale can be tracked at the vendor's side. This is a Regnow affiliate link:

http://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=7191-7&affiliate=48961

You can easily spot the affiliate ID: 48961.

This is a ClickBank affiliate ID:

http://bestsoft.spyzooka.hop.clickbank.net

This time the affiliate ID is harder to spot but it's there, trust me.

So what is RegNow and what is ClickBank? And how the affiliates know they are not cheated by the vendor? RegNow and ClickBank are two well known registration commerce providers. They take care of payment processing and deliver the electronic products (being a download link, a serial number or even a CD-ROM) to the customer. People trust the payment processors and this makes things easier and safer for everyone. Same goes for the affiliates: they know their sales are tracked by trusted third party companies and not by the vendor so they can be sure they are not cheated.

A few facts:

• Affiliate commissions for software products go up to 75%! However, well-known vendors like Symantec offer smaller commissions, up to 20 or 25 percent.
• When selling through affiliates, the vendors basically focus on the technical part while the affiliates do the marketing. However, most vendors do their own marketing too.
• A good affiliate can make a living by promoting software products while bringing a lot of customers to the vendor. Success stories are all over the net.
• Some affiliates share their earnings with customers by offering discounts! Discounts bring more sales to the affiliate and half the commission is better than nothing. More on this in my next post.